There is some good theory in this book, but it is sparse. I feel this book is more an introduction to turbos, rather than the highly technical how to do it all yourself, book I was looking for. I would not feel comfortable picking out a turbo for my car, after reading this book. This book was a huge letdown for me.

It lived up to the expectations. It tries to cover everything about tuning turbocharged engines, so not every aspect is as detailed as the next. Still a great buy, although the images look a bit old fashioned.

I've owned and driven a turbo designed car for many years. I've read a number of articles here and there and had a number of conversations, all aimed at getting an understanding of how my car worked. This book really is a concise, yet thorough, explanation of a turbo-charged engine. A discussion of the competing dynamics that are at work and what one can do to influence those dynamics. The author has provided a ton of math, so the technically inclined can use the formulas and explanations to guide their own tuning. But the book is also practical in it's explanations, not just theoretical. I drive an older Saab and I came away from the book with a real appreciation for how much great science went into the design of my car.

A little outdated as far as modern advances. But has all the basics and is still a must read starting point.

I realize that Corky Bell is one of the most recognized authorities on turbocharging, but I think that this book is fairly outdated by now and does not give adequate coverage of today's modern, computer controlled vehicles. The books most recent publication is listed as 1997. Think of how much cars have changed over the last decade. It looks like over time he has attempted to keep it timely, but even these are outdated now and are incorporated merely as footnotes to each chapter. I also hate to admit such a non-scientific, emotional response, but looking at a bunch of photos of cars and engines from decades ago just doesn't motivate me to go out and modify my car.

The book does provide a good overview of turbocharging and how it works. I do think it will serve as a good primer for people. However, I am looking forward to buying some of the more recent publications out there.

This book is very useful for the average enthusiast. I'm a mechanical engineer, so much of the technical discussion was easy for me to understand, however none of it was so complex that a non-technical person couldn't grasp it extremely quickly. Very helpful and useful for those attempting to understand turbochargers and their set up and installation. Before you get into any project, you have to understand the foundations and the big picture before you can understand the details. This is the perfect book to familiarize almost anyone with the overall design, installation, and function of turbochargers.

Great book for starter into performance mod's and even those experianced one's as well

I have read alot of technical literature, and this book covers all the bases pretty well for someone with some mechanical background, but no solid understanding of turbo system operation. It is a fun informative read!

This book was an easy read and covers a wide variety of turbo configurations. The only problem with the book is that does not really get too in-depth in which setup is best, or alot of the theory behind designs. I would recommend it as a first read for anyone designing a turbo setup due to its ease of reading and being a general overview if you are not well-versed in turbocharged engines.

Corky Bell is able to relay some very technical aspects of understanding turbo charged engines, in an easy to read and understand format. I highly recommend this to any one considering a turbo for their car, so you don't get lead astray with sales hype.

This book has all the information you need to learn from knowing absolutely nothing about turbo's and a little about engines... to becoming a professional after you complete your first turbo installation. there is tons of useful links for companies who sell the products mentioned in the book and this book goes over every application of turbos from small engines to large engines, there are formulas for everything and everything is in easy to understand and easily explained wording. EXCELLENT BOOK

This book was an easy read and covers a wide variety of turbo configurations. The only problem with the book is that does not really get too in-depth in which setup is best, or alot of the theory behind designs. I would recommend it as a first read for anyone designing a turbo setup due to its ease of reading and being a general overview if you are not well-versed in turbocharged engines.

Corky Bell is able to relay some very technical aspects of understanding turbo charged engines, in an easy to read and understand format. I highly recommend this to any one considering a turbo for their car, so you don't get lead astray with sales hype.

Focuses mainly on do's and don't of kit installation.

Has good info on basic turbo setup and intercooler selection. Would have been nice if the book contained more info on custom manufacturing of intercoolers and exhaust manifolds (forming end tanks and size to exhaust velocity vs tube type exhaust and construction). As well as selecting the correct BOV.

Overall, great information for beginning turbo quester and a recommended read.

This book is a little dated, but still has lots of important information about turbo charging. Very informative and easy to read. Makes you want to turbo charge your car!

This book has everything you'll ever need to know about putting a turbo on ANYTHING. Best of all, the book is written in plain English that anyone can read (as long as you can read English). You don't need a Phd in rocket science to turbo your family car; you just need this book, some money, and a set of wrenches!

A good book, that provides alot of usefull information, and interresting reading.
If you are considering fitting a turbo to your car, this book is a good place to start...
It covers the "design" aspect of turbo charging an engine more then the actually " building".
Note: several capters are more or less a "copy/paste" from the authours own book about "supercharging".

great book in overall theory. truly helped with the design of my engine that i'm building.

This book is perfect for the Turbo enthusiast... no matter the level. Fully comprehensive and VERY easy to read. Everything is explained very clearly and thoroughly, making note of things that are and are not important. There's even a suprising level of humor throughout.

For all those loving car tuning! I own a 2006 SEAT Leon FR 1.8T (One of the VW AG Brands)and this book is helping me a lot to understand everything arround turbo cars and how to upgrade their performance. It's very easy to undesrtand.

Let me start by saying that you shouldn't expect this book to answer really specific questions like which HKS turbo is best for a street RX-7. I'm tired of seeing reviews where people complain about a book not having some information that they wanted it to have. A book, from an information standpoint, should only be critiqued on whether or not it is what it was supposed to be, and Maximum Boost does an excellent job of being itself. It is meant to take an average enthusiast who knows nothing about constructing a turbo system up the ladder to not just building one but understanding the essential theories and math needed to operate it in a healthy and efficient manner and also make it strong, reliable, and street legal. Between explaining the relationships of connecting rod and crank loads and teaching you about what types of bends and materials your piping should be made of, the book covers virtually everything in easy to understand detail from a general standpoint making the book useful to anybodies specific project. The absolute only problem I have with the book is that Bell doesn't cover blow-off valves but for good reason. He seems to focus more on practical street turbocharging which involves light boost rather than the obscene 30+ psi found on cars like 900 HP Supras.

I had heard good things about this book before buying it and all my hopes were upheld. The book was technical enough to give you an idea how turbochargers work while still being straight-forward enough to allow the beginner to understand and comprehend it all. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in running forced induction on anything from carbureted to fuel injected vehicles. Just don't expect it to tell you how to tune your fuel injection system.

This book is full of contradictions and incorrect information.I cannot recommend this book at all.

All of the information in this book is up to date and direct to the point in each chapter. The information and calculations needed to assemble and install a system are in this book. It would be nice to have a summary of the steps to figure out a turbo system, but one can do their own outline and summary with a little time and attention. All in all, a good book with great information that even a beginner can understand with a little study.

turbo charger's bible. if you had questions or wondered whether or not this was something you could do yourself...or even if you just wanted to better understand the concept, you will not be dissapointed with this book.

This is a great book for a beginner looking for an in depth but not overbearing look at designing a turbocharger system for their vehicle. A must have for developing a well conceived turbo system. The book incorporates basic mathematics with many common sense ideas to forge an understanding of the dynamics of choosing and building turbocharging systems for specific applications. I personally am currently building a turbocharging kit for my vehicle and consider this book an essential tool.

I've looked at a number of other consumer-oriented turbocharger books and they have all been poorly written, not well illustrated and out of date. This book is perfect - it mixes a good introduction to four stroke engines, theoretical and practical aspects of turbocharging and several interesting project cars.

Buy it now!

Money well spent. Corky explains all aspects of turbocharging. Good high level theoretical treatment, and better yet, lots of practical information backed up by real life examples that test different turbo designs in different automobile types.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in turbocharging, both factory turbo cars and aftermarket kits on non turbo cars. It covers pretty much every aspect of turbocharging from manifold design, to turbo selection to fueling. I feel having read this book has better equipped me to work with turbochargers.

I have this book as well as a few others on turbos and i would reccomend this over thenm anyday, it is very in depth and adresses all the issues in turbochargers. It is for the most part not boreing it is full of illustrations and pictures which adds up to one of the most thought out and relevant books ive ever read.

This book is very well written. It handles a lot of the basic turbo knowledge that most enthusiast's need to know. What was dissapointing was that there is no real turbo sizing theory, fan blade effientcy equations or a lot of detail in a few other areas. None the less, the book is only about turbo systems and is the easiest to read. This is a great book to read. You may also want to get "Turbochargers" from Hugh MacInnes, it's also a must have, but is out of date and is not very useful on the modern EFI machines. I do like "Force Induction" by A. Graham Bell. A book that is much more knowlegable on the subject of performance turbos. It's always a good idea to get opinions of other great writers.

I have never written a review before, but, I couldn't pass this one up. This book provides lots of very important and pertinent information to turbocharge your car the right way. However, Corky IS NOT a writer. He seems to try and take a step-by-step approach to turbocharging, however, the information he presents seems to have no logical order to it whatsoever. I found myself having to reread most parts just to comprehend exactly what he is trying to say and the order to go about it. In addition, he put lots of unexplained and unreferenced photos throughout the whole book not giving any mention why they are. Some make sense, and others don't.

I found reading this book to be very painful. However, I plan to keep it strictly for reference material. Because, I figure if you get just one good piece of information from any book, it's worth keeping. I honestly don't want to go through the agony of reading the whole book again. A message to Corky: We need your brain for mechanical ability, focus on that, not writing. Please for the love of god, next time you write a book, hire a writer to do it for you!

Overall, I do have to say, the pain is worth it. Corky gives a lot of very good information to be used when you plan to turbocharge. You will just have to set aside proper grammar and unexplained photos to get through this one. Just focus on your long term goal and why you bought this book in the first place: to turbocharge your car.

I hope this helps!

There's lots of myths about turbos - most of which are at best only partially true.

I'm only 25 pages into this book (arrived yesterday) but I *know* I will be referring to it often. The author starts from the ground up and explains principles and dispels myths about turbos in a very bite-sized, easy to digest way. There's some maths but it's not overly complex and his point by point approach means you can read a bit and let it digest, then come back for more when you're ready.

The whole writing is very factual rather than opinion-based and he uses facts, figures and real world examples to explain his points. He also covers the same points from different perspectives - e.g. someone looking to buy a turbo car, someone modifying an existing system or someone building & installing a system from scratch.

I'm currently doing a turbo conversion and this has already proved to be an invaluable resource.

Highly recommended.

I found this book to be very helpful in understanding turbocharger systems. It takes you from the basics to intermediate level. This is a great reference book for anyone wanting to boost their car! I highly recommend this to anyone interested in turbocharging their car!

People will say that it doesn't cover EVERYTHING, and they're correct. But I have gotten soo many hours of enjoyment from reading this book over and over. It was the first hard info I got about turbocharging, and it teaches me so much useful information. If you want to get into turbo dynamics, this will put things into perspective. This book doesn't get extremely deep, but covers many different aspects of the whole system. I think it is a good book for any level of experience.

You're looking at this because you want to know. I'm telling you. Buy this book, read it three or four times. Learn it. Use it. You won't be sorry.

This book has the most advance information on the planet about turbocharger. It is a step by step information about Designing, Testing, and Installing Turbo System. It's also has excellent information on how to prepair and engine for this type of use. It gives you 4,6,8 and 12 cylinder information. For 1997 and until he writes another book on this same topic, this will be regarted as the bible for Turbocharger fans.

This is a great book. It goes into just enough detail to be very informative without giving you too much info and becoming dry. That is a hard thing to do but Bell does it well in this book. The book covers every part of a typical Turbocharger system in good detail with great explanations and very useful mathematical equations which you can easily apply to your own vehicle (turbocharged or not). This book will wet your appetite for more reading on Turbochargers.

Overall this books isn't bad. However it does cover a lot of equations, some of which do not include detailed enough examples. You find variables that you had no idea where they came from, then finally remembering them being covered several pages back.

I found "Turbochargers" by Hugh MacInnes a much better book.

An excellent book on turbocharging engines covering everything you need to know to get you started. I'm no mechanic but found the book very easy to read, all terminology and concepts well explained never ignoring the applications of what is being talked about.

The book is a nice balance of theory and practice, showing what works, why and how and then giving you the ability to work out how it applies to your situation.

The style of writing is excellent and the writer is always aware of his auidence - this isn't a school textboook written by a self-indulgent professor but an interesting and informative guide to the subject.

Well worth the read

This is one of the best books about any automotive subject that I have ever read. This is for several reasons:
1. The book is very readable and does not come off as overly dry or hard to digest. After reading it you feel like you might just have sat through a tech session taught by Mr Bell.
2. The ideas and opinions presented are all backed up by numbers and examples. The author does not just blow smoke.
3. The author has obviously had extensive experience accomplishing the tasks described, unlike some authors who have only a casual understanding of their subject matter.
4. The exentensive number of pictures, charts, and graphs helps to clarify what the author is describing.
If you are thinking of turbocharging your car, whether with an aftermarket kit or one you build on your own, you must read this book. I have several other books on turbochargers and this one is by far the best. If you drive a car which came from the factory with a turbocharger installed, you should read this book. One of the parts I found most interesting was how to properly care for a turbocharger system to get long life and continually good performance from it. In all, I highly recommend this book.

To put it simply, if you are interested in putting an aftermarket turbo charger into your car, then you should own this book.

I was writing a report about turbocharging a 294cc rotary engine. I used this book and found it easy to follow. But it lacks the maps for very small engines, other than 650cc for motorbikes.

This was a very good resource book for beginners. It covered a lot of theory, some basic applications and had plenty of good examples. I bought two books, of the two, this one was the most current and actually covered a little of everything (like both claimed). As many other people have pointed out in their review, this book is not "the authority" on trubocharging, but after reading it and already possesing some working knowledge I can tackle more complicated texts much better. I wouldn't buy this book and expect to be able to custom fit a turbocharger, but you should be able to service the turbocharger on your factory turbocharged car.

...you can rely on this book like the really useful manual. Don't think you will have been answered about basic physical laws or rules - you had the time in school... This serious work from Mr. Bell was made for professionals, not for amateur. If you decided to install turbo system on your runabout or you are going to tune up your almost dead something eighties turbo car, it's for you. Merely you will know exactly what where when, and why so, in your engine occurs...

Bell's book is a bible for those with turbocars. It's written in easy-to-understand language, it's organized logically, its materials are up-to-date. Real-world working turbocars such as the Ford 2.3T validate Bell's sizing, flow and power guidelines. Taken with the engineering data of MacInnes' book (which book is otherwise hopelessly out of date) one can build a working spreadsheet for sizing turbos, inlet tracts, intercoolers, and exhaust systems for upgrading a current installation intelligently. A must-buy.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, expensive too. This book is safe for those who already know a lot about Turbocharging, but they won't need this book. For the beginner, this book isn't bad to get familiar with the subject, but I wouldn't try using it as a source of information or a "how to" book, too much mis-information. Don't get this book unless you also get the book by Hugh McInnes. Mr. Bell is either guessing about things he hasn't tried, or hasn't been able to implement things that work for others because of his lack of understanding or poor execution. Don't quit your day job Corky!

If you want to learn the terminology of tubocharging and all of the complonent and how they work then this book is for you. After reading this book though you will not be able to install your own turbo system or anything as advanced as that, but you will be able to make a more educated buy on a turbo kit and at least KNOW what you're buying. Most of his explanations are good although he simplifies some technical subjects. For instance he says: make the opening of your air ducts one-fourth the size of your intercooler/radiator because at speed you only need one fourth the air. Ummmm...no that's not what a duct does. (It basically slows down the incoming air so less drag in produced, among other things...) All in all, if you want to learn about turbos then buy this book. It definitely increased my knowledge of the are ...

This is a very easy to understand book. suited for the enthusiast not an engineer. The author takes the reedier through all the aspects of turbocharging, like selecting a turbocharger, types of intercoolers, exhaust manifold design, boost controllers, and so on. Seldom, theory is discussed in this book except in chapters 1 and 16. But be aware, this author for some reason wrote misleading sentences in this book that contain his opinion, not facts! Over all very good book.

For years I have heard about turbos and what they do. People often have suggestions about what to do if you have a turbocharged engine, or if you're planning to turbocharge a N/A engine. What alot of them cannot tell you is why you should or shouldn't do these things.

'Maximum Boost' gives these reasons and also exposes some of the false logics that you may have heard. It didn't just teach me about turbos, but a whole lot about modern engines in general.

At the end of the day, I feel alot more confident about designing a turbocharger system to fulfill my personal needs in a safe and reliable manner.

The only thing I would have added to this book (probably in one short chapter), is some more information on diesel engines. But for now I am satisfied.

Bottom line: If you are into high-performance autos, get this book. Get Maximum Boost.